Socialist Organisation

The Socialist Party is the party of humanity. The Socialist Party member stands firmly on the bed-rock of the class struggle, and; declares, that so long as the means of production are in the hands of a small class, the workers will be forced to sell their labour-power to them for a bare subsistence wage. Consequently, between these two classes a struggle must go on until the toilers come together on the political as well as on the industrial field and take over for themselves that which, being the result of their labour, justly belongs to them. 

Our enemy is the capitalist class, and their lackeys of every kind 

The materialist conception of history (historical materialism, for short) was discovered a little before the middle of the nineteenth century by the great German thinker and practical revolutionary Karl Marx. It was the first - and remains the only - scientific view of history. Although this discovery was a milestone in the development of human thought, historical materialism is not taught in our schools. People who go through them come out with the idea that history is just a jumble of chance events involving ‘great men’ such as kings or generals. The reason for this is not hard to find. It is because our education system has been developed to serve the interests of the ruling, capitalist class. What concerns these people more than anything else is, maintaining capitalism. Reject the false reformist solutions.

We live in a world dominated by capitalism, a system which allows a small minority of capitalists to oppress and exploit the great majority of humankind.  It is capitalism that brings about great inequalities in living standards with more poor people now in the world than ever before, starts murderous wars to steal the resources of other countries and causes the growing devastation of our natural environment. Either we get rid of this outmoded and  increasingly decrepit system or it will devastate humanity. The way forward is a class-free and state-free society on a world scale where people do not oppress and exploit each other and where we live in harmony with our natural environment. To create world socialism it is necessary to overthrow the rule of capitalism and this can be done only through revolution. Socialism is the hope of the whole working class. A class-free socialist cooperative commonwealth cannot be attained without the end of capitalism. 

We’re constantly told that politics is all about compromise. Compromise is nothing more than a means of preserving the status quo, being compliant with whatever concessions may be granted. We support socialism over capitalism and that means the minority class ownership of production being ended, not merely passed on to another small elite.

The means of production  must not remain the monopoly of any particular social group (bourgeoisie, bureaucracy, technocracy); they ought to be socialized not turned into the property of the state.

The realm of democracy is not only the political sphere but the whole sphere of public life – production, education, scientific research, cultural activities, health service, etc. This is possible under the conditions of a thorough decentralisation. The need to coordinate some social activities does not restore centralism but leads to federalism.

Common ownership means to belong to the society as a whole and to be put at the disposal of the community the results of work to cover both individual and collective social needs.

Extreme decentralism, advocated by some  ecologists, holds that all big systems are intrinsically bad and that all those activities that require them (for example, the production of nuclear power, jet planes, urbanisation) ought to be abandoned. excessive decentralization has a number of shortcomings, such as:

The absence of necessary coordination leads to disorder, waste of natural resources, inefficiency. Some important social activities require common natural and human resources, division of roles and unique direction. These include energy production, public transportation, large-scale exchange of goods, protection of the natural environment, production of indispensable raw materials.

 A low level of productivity based on small scale technology requires more labor and yet produces more poverty. Many important human needs can not be met with small scale technology.

 Small scale social organisation and reduction of needs makes many rare, specific human skills redundant. Specialised scientific research, fine arts, high achievements in athletic skills cannot be supported by small, self-reliant communities. Hardly any goal can justify a reduction of an already achieved high level of human creativity.

The inevitable social-psychological consequence of a narrow, provincial mentality. After bourgeois civilisation, with its revolutionary tendency of growing cosmopolitanism and life enrichment, any return to parochial forms of life and thought would constitute a major retrogression.

Decentralisation does not automatically eliminate authoritarianism. One huge, impersonal “leviathan” may be merely replaced by a number of small, personal, local managers.

On the other hand, centralism also has serious shortcomings:  

The so-called “democratic centralism” has nothing democratic in it: a well organized threatening elite, holding firmly all levers of power, will never fail to secure a majority. In some other systems minorities have the right to continue to defend their dissenting view; here they are fully compelled to conform.

Too many issues that can be regulated by local or regional communities themselves are now decided upon at the level of global society.

Bureaucracy creates and carefully maintains the image of itself as a precious social force without which the society would fall apart, and which, consequently, deserves excessive privileges for its services. The truth is, of course, that the more expansive it grows, the more useless and paralyzing it becomes.

Decisions are taken at a considerable distance from the place where they are needed, and they often come with a damageable delay. The center has the advantage of seeing the whole context, but it has to operate on the basis of abstract, reifying information, missing too many psychological factors, and lacking real understanding of the specific situation. The center, therefore, tends to impose simple, uniform, elegant-looking solutions for the whole system. But complex, irregular-looking solutions may do much better justice to the diversity of various parts within the system.

 Human beings feel responsibility in proportion to the freedom they have to contribute, by their own autonomous action, to a given course of events. The more often they have to wait for the orders from the center, the less responsible they feel, the more alienated, they become.